Cappuccino Thoughts 108: On Finding Your Creative Outlet [Corporate Creative Class]
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Cappuccino Thoughts is a weekly newsletter about culture and creativity in New York.
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Welcome back to the Corporate Creative Class, my ongoing series chronicling the lives of 9-5ers with creative side hustles. Previous issues put the spotlight on a focaccia maker, painter, and art salon host. Today I am pleased to feature Lyndsey Kong, VC investor by day and writer and curator by night. She is the creator of the Substack Taming the Light.
“As long as I’ve been conscious, I’ve had an acute sensitivity to aesthetics. I want to make everything in my life beautiful.”
That’s how Lyndsey starts our conversation, so I know I’m in for a treat.
CA: How did you get started with your creative work?
LK: I painted growing up. But my parents also pushed me academically and I was happy to follow that path. I went to Stanford. I used to work at the Anderson Collection at Stanford and I loved walking amidst the Pollocks and de Koonings. But Stanford itself was quite a technical environment. I wanted to start a fashion brand, but in that context, that meant start a fashion tech startup. I fell down that rabbit hole and worked on that for a few years. I ended up working in investing because it seemed like the most creative expression of finance and tech. But I also have a creative side that fundamentally needs to be expressed. When I first started my job in tech investing, it was during a really quiet period for the market, so I had all this time to spend how I wanted. I had also moved into my first New York apartment and needed art for my walls, so I painted large-scale canvases fit for my space. I had this very unusual space that was a 1 bedroom with a 1-½ bathrooms, and I sort of used that 1/2 bathroom as a studio space. I really love the physicality of painting and the tactile quality, especially after a day on Excel. By the end of that period, I had six completed works. It’s definitely made moving since then more complicated.
CA: How do you think about balancing a 9-5 with your creative work?
LK: It feels a bit like Hannah Montana! There are times when I’ve spent a long day in financial models and data and all I want is to look at a beautiful image. But there are equally days when I’m in a creative jam and I appreciate that my job doesn’t always demand something of me creatively. It does feed me intellectually, and it’s soothing to feel productive in a different way.
CA: How do you write your Substack?
LK: I think of my Substack more as visual research than writing. It’s an exploration of what I see as my taste. I’ve also been getting to know New York City through the galleries, stores, and food. I love experiencing the beauty in different elements of my life. When I’m writing, I’ll often respond to a line of poetry or something I’ve encountered in my day. I also have a few recurring segments, like Desk Crits, which is an art direction segment, and Love Notes, which is more of a visual journal. I really like to play with words and how they’re paired with images. I am more of a visual person, and I use writing as a medium to curate and string together a lot of visual media.
CA: Substack is built more with writers in mind than visual artists. How do you navigate the restrictions of the platform?
LK: I don’t think that everything should be a newsletter. I make a lot of mood boards. I don’t know that what I’m creating is very suited to a single-scroll newsletter. I wish people could flip pages, but that’s just not how the platform was built. But I have had so many serendipitous encounters because of this platform, so I won’t leave it right now. I do think the platform is very good for direct distribution.
CA: I get asked a lot how to get started on Substack. What would you say to someone on that topic?
LK: Truly just put your work out there. But I also need to take that advice. I can be quite perfectionistic with my work. I’ll go back and edit it ten times. I want to create things that will live for a decade and that I won’t look back on and feel embarrassed. I know I need to get over that. I do think that especially if you aren’t making money from your creative pursuit, you really have nothing to lose. I used to look at my metrics a lot, but now I believe that if you make work you’re proud of, the right people will find it.
CA: Where does the name Taming the Light come from?
LK: The Little Prince is one of my favorite books. At one point, the fox says to the prince that taming is an act that’s often forgotten, but that once you tame something, you’re responsible for it. “Taming” in my Substack is to intentionally approach the world, to seek beauty, and really establish connection. The “light” part is because so much of beauty for me begins from the visual. Through light we have color, and casting a light is an act of paying attention.
CA: Something I’ve thought about a lot is that it almost seems unjust that all this creativity is bottled up during the day and only allowed to flourish on the margins. I wish it were easier for creative careers to pay the bills, but it feels incredibly challenging in New York. Equally, I sometimes wonder if putting financial pressure on creative pursuits would suck the joy out of them and make them devoid of the creative spark. It can feel like a double act to have a traditional corporate job and a more entrepreneurial creative pursuit. And yet, I wonder if there’s creativity in the constraints. I wonder if I would be so enthusiastic about my bags or writing if it were what I had to get up and do every day, instead of what I got to do during my off hours. How do you reconcile the different facets of your life?
It’s like microdosing the potential of what this could evolve into.
LK: I do think people are multifaceted and should be allowed to be so. It’s like microdosing the potential of what this could evolve into. But I also tend to avoid the question about what I do for work. When I’m in more creative settings, I just say I’m a freelance writer or curator. When I say I work in private equity, it puts people on their guard. At work, I get the opposite reaction. My boss discovered my painting portfolio and asked to buy work from me, which was unexpected. It’s a delicate balancing act - I find myself intentionally resisting identifying too strongly with my day job; I’m grateful it affords me my lifestyle in the city, but my soul isn’t paying the bills. Am I comfortable with that? I’m still figuring that out.
CA: What do you think of the New York creative scene? I once said to a friend that it seems like everyone I know has a creative side project. He thought that was just who I surrounded myself with.
LK: I definitely seek out people who are also doing things like this. I think creative people just get each other. I don’t need 100% of my time devoted to my creative work, but it would certainly be nice to have 50%. I do wonder if that would help me push the needle. I think the way that creativity scales on platforms like Substack and TikTok is different from making a physical product. I think about the idea of craftsmanship. Another of my passions, interior design, is not scalable, and there’s a certain magic in that. The fact that it can’t scale makes it all the more special. But an unscalable creative project also makes a 9-5 a necessity. I do think that the New York creative scene has an unbeatable density of top-tier creative talent. You can take a train uptown and visit the blue chip art galleries, or head downtown to the emerging galleries.
CA: What’s next for you?
LK: Ultimately, I’m trying to be the creative director of my own life. To me, that’s everything from putting on an outfit to getting a meal together to designing my apartment. I don’t know yet what the end state of that looks like or if it will continue being relegated to outside my work life, but for now I want to keep doing that. It’s an ongoing exploration to find the right balance.
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Pop-up in Greenpoint this weekend! Come join me Saturday and Sunday to say hi, shop brand new bags, and see the unveiling of my latest collaboration. If you comment or reply to this email, I’ll send you my guide to Greenpoint so you can plan the perfect day. I’m super excited to see you all there!
I just have to commend the commitment to a theme. This was quite the look with so many shades of pink and red. She’s sporting not one, but two red bags, a red kerchief, a sheer pink skirt or tunic situation, and she’s even found pink cowboy boots to match. The polka dot pants are also a statement maker.
I really loved Language City by Ross Perlin because I am both a language-obsessed polyglot (I speak 6 to varying levels of fluency) and a fiercely devoted new New Yorker. You may know this intuitively if you’ve ever walked around a city street here—New York is the most multilingual city in the world. It is also home to the highest number of speakers of endangered languages. Endangered languages are those that are only spoken by a small number of people, diminishing every year. The first part of this book traces why New York has become a home for speakers of so many languages. This legacy was shaped by varying levels of open immigration policies at different times, war and colonization in other parts of the world, labor, and that great classic, the American Dream. The second part of the book focuses on six individuals who each speak an endangered language ranging from Seke, which only has 700 speakers left, 100 of whom all live in one apartment building in Brooklyn, to Yiddish, once a connecting language across the Jewish world, but which is now largely confined to the Hassidic population of Brooklyn. This book makes me want to travel around the world by going to the furthest stretches of Brooklyn and Queens to see these thriving communities—but it’s not like I could even speak with them if I went. I highly recommend it to anyone else who wants a taste of linguistics class or loves learning about different parts of the world.
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This week I am hosting a book talk with author Leigh Bardugo and seeing Hadestown on Broadway.
All my best,
